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Used to be I'd blog avidly, but now I just want to leave this reminder of a moment for myself.

Today I have my first proper non-dental surgery, in that I'm going in for ESWL, a kidney stone treatment. 9mm kidney stone. I'm going to be sedated and everything.

I'm unsure how this will go, so I wanted to leave some kind of mark and I picked this way to do it.

Yep. That's all.

So I'm back on the Guild Wars 2, somehow. I don't know. These things just happen to people. I don't question it anymore.

I'm trying the "World Vs World" PVP mode because it has interesting looking armor and I'd like some. So me not really knowing what to do, I pick the blue team because it's called the Moogooloos and set about free-roaming aimlessly. Eventually I find some dude and decide safety in numbers, so I follow him. We engage in the time-honored ritual of jumping up and down at each other to acknowledge one's presence, so I know it's okay to follow them.
We bump into some red people, shoot them a while, win.
Run around a lot.
Eventually he stops.
I stop.
He dismounts. I don't have a mount.
We sneak carefully up a hill and around a corner of a wall.
We approach a control point. I go into sniper mode, he pulls out a couple axes.
We rush the point.

Nothing happens.
"hold on." he types in chat. "this is our camp."
"in my defense" he continues, "I am colorblind."

[story ends]

EPILOGUE:
While we were laughing at that, a bunch of dudes showed up and ganked us. Thus is life in PvP.

Still embittered and tired, but here's another post.

Timespinner was a pretty fun Metroidvania, where I got stuck at 99% in both timelines and so I did not 100% it which makes it a terrible game 0/10. ... I lie, it was fine, I just still cannot fathom where the last couple little bits could be. I should someday load it up with the "detect secrets" item equipped and just stroll around. Playlist.

Secret of the Old Clock ... ah, Nancy Drew my beloved. I love these games dearly and it was a delight to finally show people some of what I've been talking about in all those posts I make about the series. Playlist.

Cavern of Dreams is another N64-style collectathon in the vein of Corn Kidz, except you're a rolly little dragon. This game confused me for a while, then delighted me, and then confused me more. Lots of intricate puzzles that don't SEEM like puzzles. Very smart game, made me feel very stupid. Playlist.

Finally, En Garde! was a breezy swashbuckling game about parrying and dodging and swords and words. I finished this game after a marathon of a boss level, then loaded it up the next day to find that all my skills had fled in the night. Playlist.

We'll start with the playlist link.

So this is a weird and interesting one. It's very repetitive, it's messy and weird, it's full of goofy gags and it's an absolute tangled mess of navigating through airports talking to stock image JPGs of dogs.

That said it's ... oddly fun? The writing in this carries it I think. It's a surprisingly heartfelt story of your character and his fiancee, the last two humans left in a world now run by dogs. I got emotional over some of it. It's really nice stuff, very... uh, humanist. I guess.

But this is also a very silly game with a lot of jokes, and if one doesn't land just look for the next one which'll be along in three minutes. My kind of groove.

Welcome 2024, I hope this is not how you mean to go on.

Space Station Silicon Valley is an absolute gem of an idea. You're a computer chip on a station full of robot animals. Go forth and become the animals to solve puzzles and platform and complete stages.

Unfortunately, the gem is poorly cut. The platforming is painful and awkward to control, the camera is frankly bad. The puzzles are often so obtuse and so tied to the poor platforming that I was constantly saying "This can't possibly be the solution, right?" and then looking it up and either it absolutely was but it wasn't working properly, or it wasn't but the actual solution was deeply obtuse.

I lost faith and confidence in the game's ability to provide a fair puzzle rapidly, which is a bad thing when your game is mostly puzzle-solving.

On the whole I'd say this is perhaps a third of a great game. It absolutely got worse over time, the game not understanding its own weaknesses and insisting they were strengths. I didn't want to walk away as frustrated by it as I did.

As always, I streamed this and there's archives.

The final two games of the year are a pair of hidden object games. I've always loved these, they're absolutely junk food and the market is spammed with them but every one of them has its own way to be deeply ridiculous and I appreciate that.

Puss in Boots was like, what if you adopted a cat and that cat dragged you through a galactic portal to cat town and you have to solve all their nonsense because Puss in Boots is trying to stop Christmas from coming? It had a robust postgame which is neat. I approve of that.

Enchanted Express meanwhile was like... "Your brother has been turned into a mouse, is this awesome? Y/Y?" and of course there's no option to leave him like that, so you have to participate in the well-known Christmas tradition of boarding a train and listening to the life stories of three strangers who are also turned into animals and then you fight the narrator for freedom I guess.

Both of these were BAFFLING relics of something and I hope to play a few more hidden objects over the course of the year. The playlist is here.

Normally I'd do an end-of-year post, but I'm probably going to do a summary stream on Twitch instead.

D'you remember Bogo? They did a lot of webcomics, and that one game Lyle in Cube Sector? I hadn't thought of Bogo in many years, 'til Celine streamed Lyle in Cube Sector over on her channel. The way she was talking like the entire site had just fallen off the net made me search it up to see for myself that it was still online, and right on the front page was the announcement for their new game: Corn Kidz 64.

Corn Kidz 64 takes that sort of squishy hyper-exaggerated art style, combines it with absolutely precise controls and a low-resolution Aesthetic, and sends it out into the world with a main campaign that's finishable in about ten hours if you don't mind the difficulty spike larger than the Statue of Liberty that steps in right at the end.

I think this game may have given me a mild RSI and I don't really mind that.

Anyway it's dang good stuff and I had a really good time playing it, although I did not 100% it.

That's watchable on Youtube here.

I'm getting really behind on these completes!

Gabriel Knight 3 was the first time I'd played through this one and I'm still kinda reeling from it. Like I honestly don't know how I feel about some of the developments towards the back half of the game. It's very ... well, I can see why the fandom has been going "AND THEN?!!?" for the last dozen years. I finished it off by reading the little teaser story at the end that hinted at GK4 and... welp, that was it. That's all the Gabe there is, until I do the 20th Anni remake of the first game. Playlist here.

Wrath of the Gods was an absolute delight. A 1994 FMV game remastered this year for HD video, playable right on the web. A really good time was had by all. Delightful death screams. Highly recommended. Playlist here.

As for Katamari... it's Katamari. Playlist here.

I've been trying to think of what to say about these two games for a couple days and I'm very tired so I'm just gonna link the videos and be done with it.

D got a single video here.

Gabe Knight 1 gets a whole four video playlist, here.

I wish I had more to say, I particularly love GK1 and playblogged it here before, but this is what I got right now. Low brain month, y'know?

Being a superhero is a power fantasy: you get power and you use it to help people. If you have no power but you help people anyway in spite of the laws against it, they call you a villain.
That's the launching point for Penny's crimes: Not terrorism or chaos, but attacks on society itself.

Okay sometimes there's a little chaos.

Penny Larceny's a VN from Fiction Factory Games, writers of beloved classic Arcade Spirits and probably-classic Arcade Spirits: The New Challengers which I still need to play someday. The premise is that Penny, whom you share a head with, is a henchie-for-hire for one of three endearing villains, all of whom are in it against the world and need a buddy to back them up.

You select three from a large menu of crimes to commit, select your boss, and set out upon an adventure. Unlike a lot of VNs out there, there's no failstates here. You will always succeed, the tale will simply twist and turn harder if you pick options that temporarily set you back. You can either 5-star your missions like a perfect thief, or aim for the (surprisingly more difficult) zero-stars of total chaos. Either way, Penny pulls through.

So that's the base overview but the true charm of PLGES (let's not call it that actually) is in the writing and characterization. Nobody's a dry cliche here, everyone has interesting hidden depths and a meaningful story to uncover. Some of them cause genuine emotional impact damage, others are just a fun ride. And what if you could somehow help everyone?

Playing and streaming through this game was a fantastic time and my new goal in life is to make sure this thing sells well enough to get a teased continuation. Friends, do not make me sad. Pick this one up today or sooner.